KotOR Write-through Thing
by Samuraibrarian
Summary: Exactly what it says on the tin. Meirah Arirai is, as far as she knows, a mild-mannered Republic commtech, assigned to the party of a cranky junior Jedi and a seriously paranoid ace pilot on a tour of the Outer Rim. Hijinx ensue. F!Revan/Carth
1. Chapter 1

Carth Onasi settled into his post on the bridge with a very large mug of the strongest caff he could find. Hopefully the first watch would be less eventful than the meeting that had preceded it. Astrogation was throwing a fit because Bastila Shan's party of Jedi were insisting on using a different track through the system than the one they'd plotted. Payload was up in arms because the stock of relief supplies the Jedi had brought aboard was five times larger than the inventory they'd submitted. No one liked their lofty disdain for the ship and the people tasked with keeping it running. And all of that paled in comparison to the problem of nothing about the mission making any kriffing sense.

They were supposed to be partying with a larger fleet with the ultimate objective of breaking the Sith blockade of Taris. Bastila, for all that she was inexperienced as a Jedi and insufferable as a person, had a mysterious, incredibly useful ability to influence the outcome of large battles. Sending her to the front was reasonable, sure, but sending her in a full-sized cruiser with a skeleton crew and an inadequate escort seemed ludicrous.

"Commander?"

Bastila's engineer materialized at his elbow. He suppressed a groan. The unprepossessing middle-aged woman, clad in the dove-gray coat of a tech officer had been an incongruous last-second addition to the passenger manifest, grounding them in port over an hour past their scheduled departure while the ship's administrators located a berth and waited for her credentials to be authenticated. Why would a pack of Jedi need an ordinary commtech anyway? By the intensity with which Bastila focused on her when she wasn't inventing ways to find fault with, misunderstand, or generally obstruct the day-to-day business of operating the vessel, he was ready to assume that the engineer was her pet, but as far as he knew, Jedi didn't take lovers.

Carth glowered at her from under his eyebrows.

"Pardon the interruption, sir, but I'm unsure of the protocol here...I've got a concern about the encryption on our outgoing transmissions and I don't know to whom I should address it."

"You mentioned it to your CO?"

One corner of her mouth pulled in an apologetic grimace. "She suggested I make any corrections I deem appropriate...without consulting anyone. With due respect to Jedi Shan, that's not sensible."

Now there was a surprise. "Good call, Officer..." he tried to recall her name from the manifest.

"Arirai."

"Officer Arirai. Commander Onasi. Congratulations on being the first of the Jedi entourage to consider working with, not against us. He offered his hand. She clasped it with a wry smile.

"Don't thank me yet, sir. Your Comms Chief is probably not going to like what I have to say. But I figure it's better that I raise the issue and offer my help than that he be accosted by someone outside of his field."

"I was wondering why the Jedi would need their own commtech. Now I see why they brought you along."

" Maybe you're right." She cast around as if to make sure no one else was listening. "Confidentially, though, I don't think they know exactly what I do either...My background's in infosec. They've had me fix four datapads and a holocom since this afternoon. I think they're under the impression that I'm a repair jockey."

"They're also under the impression that the crew are running a resort, not a military transport, so I wouldn't take it too personally." Carth punched a code into the viewscreen on his desk. A junior officer with a white-blond high-and-tight appeared in the doorway a scant few moments later.

"Commander?"

"Ensign Ulgo, Officer Arirai needs an escort to the comm center. If Grathan tries to give her hell, tell him I sent her."

"Yes sir. Officer Arirai?"

"Thank you Commander, Ensign. I need to make a brief stop at my quarters to grab a couple of datacards. Is that okay? Won't take long, I promise."

"Not a problem. Lead the way, Officer."


	2. Chapter 2

"Onasi here. Bastila's escape pod is away. You're the last surviving crew. I can't wait for you much longer. You need to get to the pod bay, now!"

Several seconds passed. He squinted hard at the single blue indicator on the viewscreen. A series of red blips, indicating the Sith boarders, were beginning to fall back to the bulkheads. Not good. They were debarking in preparation to destroy the ship, and killing anyone they found on their way out.

"Copy that, Commander,"

His eyes widened. It was the commtech from the Jedi party. "Arirai, is that you?"

Bastila had resisted bridge crew's order to evacuate. When he'd resorted to the expedient of stuffing her bodily into an escape pod, she had seized a fistful of his collar and refused to let go until she extracted a promise that he, personally, would find and protect her technician. The Jedi's self-important attitude made it easy to forget that she was still young, a handful of years older than his son would've been at most. Seeing her genuinely afraid was an unwelcome reminder.

"None other. Working my way in your direction. While you've got that life-support feed, whom should I expect to encounter between me and thee?"

"There's a patrol of two in the corridor just ahead of you, and another pair in the adjoining room."

"I'm stealth-enabled. Not a problem."

Thirty seconds dilated into an eternity as he watched the indicator crawl down the corridor and round a corner. He heard a brief, muffled burst of blaster fire. Two other blips of light collided with hers, flared, then faded.

"You're almost here. Careful, though. There's an entire squad of Sith troops in the bay between us. We need to figure out a way to thin their numbers." He thumbed the power-cell catch on his sidearm and calculated the likelihood that they could surprise and overpower a half-dozen armored troopers. "There was a security system in place, but it looks like they've disabled it."

"Wait, this is a Hammerhead, so Rendili..." he could almost hear the gears in her head accelerating. "Far as you know, the physical security array is stock, right? No after-market mods?"

He pushed the life-support panel to the side, then opened and scrolled through a list of specifications. " Vanjervalis EnviroSec X12, build 3.2."

The beep of an activating terminal was followed by a second tone indicating a successful root-level login. "Hells, why didn't you say so before?" He heard an intake of breath, and a final, decisive tap.

The hair on his nape stood on end. A grating, low-pitched buzz and the stench of burning plastics permeated the air. He counted down as six heavy, metal-clad objects struck the floor in the room beyond.

The blast door was supposed to require a two-part bioscan to operate. It popped open like an ordinary cabin porthole. Startled, he turned and leveled his pistol at the open space. She lifted a hand from her datapad in a gesture of placation. The front of her coat bore a hatchwork of spattered blood.

"You made it just in time. The last escape pod's ready for deployment. Let's get out of here while we can." Something on the periphery of his consciousness gave a sharp twang. If they didn't shove off immediately, they were as good as fragged.

She nodded in acknowledgement and took a tentative step forward. Impatient, he stepped out, caught her by the forearm and hauled her in. She swallowed a yelp. More blood, her own this time, spread from defensive wounds under his fingers.

He planted his free hand in the small of her back and steered her toward the open hatch of the pod. "There'll be time for patching up and debriefing once we make landfall, sister. Now, we move." She crawled in and snapped her harness into place while he battened down and checked the instrument panels for the final time.

"She's alright?" Arirai's fingers clenched around the harness straps like claws.

"I loaded her in and released the pod myself." He strapped in and engaged the repulsors, bare seconds ahead of a blaze of orange-yellow light and a hail of debris that clattered noisily against the pod's hull. "She'll be anxious to get reacquainted once we're in atmo."


	3. Chapter 3

Meirah's eyes snapped open. She didn't recognize that ceiling, nor that particular combination of dank, dusty smells. She sat up fast, and squinted at the spots that exploded in front of her eyes.

A strange man loomed above her. She gave a startled yelp and flung one hand, palm out, toward the far corner of the room. He flinched and took a step back. She turned her hand over and gave it a quizzical glance.

"Hey there." He was all broad shoulders, scruff-covered jaw, and dark circles under whiskey-colored eyes. "Good to see you awake, rather than thrashing around in your sleep. You must have been having one hell of a nightmare. I was beginning to wonder if you were ever going to come to."

"Guess so." Now that she was upright, she was developing a ferocious headache. She pointedly looked at him, then scanned the room from corner to corner, hoping he'd elaborate on where they were.

"We were the last crew to leave the Endar Spire before she was scuttled by the Sith," he supplied. "I was with you in the escape pod. Do you remember?"

She grasped at the vague memory of being shoved into the escape pod and how, in that period just before impact, when the passage of time seemed to slow to a crawl, she'd puzzled over which Kwymar-sector language he was using to curse. "Right. Commander-"

He cut her off with a shake of his head. "Carth. You were banged up pretty badly when we made landfall. I managed to drag you away from the crash site in the chaos that followed. Not exactly a textbook landing, but we put down right between a flophouse that that the Sith occupation forces mostly ignore and medcenter with a doc who doesn't ask too many questions. By the time the patrols arrived on the scene, we were long gone."

She nodded. "Carth it is, then. Call me Meirah. Seems you've saved my life twice in..." How long had she been out anyway?

"You've been slipping in and out of consciousness for a couple of days now. And don't worry about it. I haven't abandoned anyone on a mission before. Don't intend to start now."

"You may live to regret that. I'm told I lose a lot of my natural charm when I'm awake." She pressed a palm to the side of her head and instantly wished she hadn't. The room began to spin. She bent forward, screwed her eyes shut, and concentrated on the task of keeping air moving through her lungs

He sucked in a breath in sympathy. "Here, let me take a look at that." Before she could protest, he had her jaw cupped in one palm and was lifting her hair away from her forehead with the fingers of the other hand. "Huh. Looks like the meds are doing their job. You won't be winning any beauty contests for a couple of days, but the wound's closed completely. May not even leave a scar. The doc wanted to shave your head. At the rate you're healing, I'm glad I argued against it."

She touched the back of her neck. Sure enough, her hair was all still there, damp with perspiration but relatively clean, and combed into a thick plait. The commander had hauled her bodily out of a smoking escape pod and cared for her while she'd been insensible for days; that didn't faze her. The thought of him washing the gore out of her hair, on the other hand, struck her as an oddly intimate detail.

He gave a shrug and a small smile, as if he'd heard her thoughts. "Seemed like a shame, is all. Speaking of, he wanted to see you again today. If you're up to it, I bet he'd be thrilled to see you walk in under your own power."

"Got a few tasks to take care of first. Sitting up without my head going fuzzy is at the top of the list."

"This might help. The landlord said to make sure you got a dose as soon as you woke up. Cuts through the pain and fatigue. Just wish it didn't taste like it came out of the wheel-well of a troop transport." He pressed a mug of steaming liquid into her hands.

"You said the Sith are in control here. Why's the superintendent going out of his way to help a couple of fugitives?" The infusion was strongly astringent, and had an earthy aftertaste, but she thought his assessment was unfairly negative. And her head was already beginning to clear.

"The people here don't have any love for the occupation forces. If I understand it right, life was hard enough for non-humans in the upper city before they swarmed in. Even then, ratholes like this one were they only place they were tolerated. Now there are curfews, checkpoints, random searches...They're making it ten times harder for regular people to go to work, get their kids to school, to live a normal life." He looked away, eyes dark. As he turned, she noticed the discoloration from a fading bruise around his eye and cheekbone. That likely wasn't an injury sustained in the crash.

"You engaged them. What happened?"

He sighed. "I did some scouting while you were out. Ran into an Ithorian mother and child, in the sights of a couple of off-duty Sith sonsahutts. Not even pretending to be anything other than casual cruelty toward people who couldn't fight back." He bristled at the memory. "Know I shouldn't have gotten involved, believe me. Something in me just snapped."

"Right, you shouldn't have. But considering the circumstances, I'm in no position to fault you for heroic behavior."

"That was the landlord's mate and child. They waived half the rent, brought meds for you, and gave me some useful intel about the situation belowdecks."

"Really? And what's that?" Meirah hauled herself upright.

"Eight escape pods in total were deployed before Malak's men scuttled the Endar Spire. Ours was the only one to make landfall in the Upper City- we're lucky in that regard- but there are reports of others touching down on the lower levels. That's gotta be where Bastila landed.

"Putting down in the middle of a Sith siege is lucky? What's down there anyway?"

"The undercity directly below us, is controlled by swoop gangs and crime lords. A similar situation to Coruscant, from what I understand. Below that, at ground level, I'm hearing crazy stories about damned souls and monsters. We're under blockade from above. Can't expect reinforcements. So it's going to fall to us to get down there and extract Bastila before Malak's men find her."

"Bastila...?" That name was supposed to be significant. She stared, filtering through a tumble of sounds and images in her mind. She was able to identify a high, sharp voice, the blaze of a lightsaber, and, for the moment, the texture of a focused mind, suppressed and dampened by...something.

"Whoa, where'd you go?" Carth touched her shoulder. "That bump on the head may have done more damage than I thought. Bastila, your CO. The attack on the Endar Spire, the Blockade, those are all because Malak's after her, because she can do things that may influence the outcome of the war. Her last significant act of command was to mightily inconvenience the entire mission by bringing you aboard at the last minute."

"You're certain, given the situation you just enumerated, that she's still alive and at large?" As soon as she'd said it, Meirah felt a twinge in the back of her mind, something starting awake after a long sleep. The Jedi was, at the very least, alive, though she had no idea why she was so certain of it.

"Blocades are difficult and expensive. Ground-level occupation is worse. And Malak doesn't wait around for nice things like orderly troop recalls once an objective's accomplished." He grimaced. "If the Sith had what they wanted, they wouldn't be here."

She shoved her hand into where she expected the inner pocket of her coat to be, and was momentarily alarmed to find that she wasn't wearing it. "I don't suppose my datapad survived the crash."

Carth retrieved it from a bench on the adjacent wall and passed it to her.

"Excellent!" One of the corners of the case was dented and there was a hairline crack in the screen, but it powered on with no trouble. She opened a document and began to swipe through the pages. "Hammerhead escape pods come standard with distress beacons. Rather than traipsing randomly through what, from your info, is likely to be a hostile environment, if I can find a holonet access point that isn't totally locked down, I can get a fix on their last reported location, maybe even some life support data if we're lucky."

He frowned, doubtful. "You sure the Sith wouldn't already be on that? They've had probe droids all over the pod that got us here."

"Remember, when we met, how I was on the way to the comm center?"

"You said something about a security concern?"

"About how our outgoing transmissions looked like, well, outgoing Republic military transmissions. I fixed it." With a tablet in hand and a job to do, pain and fatigue faded into the background. "Any party attempting a scan is going to find comm-static on a channel that, if I remember right, is usually reserved for inter-droid, machine language conversations on this planet." She turned her datapad screen to face him, and bracketed the relevant frequency bands with her finger and thumb. He gave her a glazed stare and a slow, dubious nod.

She cocked an eyebrow. "What, too technical?"

"Not at all. Spent my first year in the Navy chained to the comm desk. It's just," he shook his head and scratched the back of his neck. "Been a crazy couple of days. Starting to sink in now that you're back among the living."

"Glad to be able to free up your headspace for other concerns." She drained the dregs of her mug and wrinkled her nose at the bitter taste of the dregs. "Your hands are shaking. When was the last time you ate?

"Um..." he rolled his eyes to the side, trying to recall.

"Too long then. I imagine there's got to be a restaurant somewhere close. Those often have public holo access in addition to food." She tucked her datapad under her arm and hauled herself to her feet. She felt suddenly queasy. Her vision dimmed.

Carth caught her by the elbow and held her upright until she recovered. "Doc first. Then food. Then search and rescue."


End file.
